In-house manual construction of high-density and high-quality tissue microarrays by using homemade recipient agarose-paraffin blocks

초록

Background: Self-made tissue punches can be effectively used to punch holes in blank recipient paraffin blocks and extract tissue cores from the donor paraffn blocks for the low-cost construction of tissue microarrays (TMAs). However, variable degrees of section distortion and loss of the tissue cores can occurs during cutting of the TMAs, posing technical problems for in-house manual construction of high-density TMAs. We aimed to update the method for in-house manual TMA construction to improve the quality of high-density TMAs. Methods: Blocks of agarose gel were subjected to the standard tissue processing and embedding porcedure to prepare recipient agarose-paraffin blocks. The self-made tissue punches and recepient agarose-praffin blocks were used to construct TMAs, which were completely melted and re-embedded in paraffin to make finished TMA blocks. Results: The donor tissue cores were completely integrated into the surrounding paraffin of the recipient blocks. This method enabled us to construct high-dinsity TMAs with significantly less section distortion or loss of tissue cores during microtomy. Conclusions: Simple and inexpensive construction of high-density and high-qualit TMAs can be warranted by using paraffinized agarose gel as recipient blocks.